As promised, Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists is “bigger and better and stronger” less than two years after Hurricane Harvey destroyed the Houston hospital.
The practice, which sees more than 50,000 patients a year, has opened a 50,292-square-foot hospital about three miles away from the old location, which was wiped out by floodwaters.
The new hospital, part of the Compassion-First Pet Hospital network, employs more than 50 veterinarians, including 30 board-certified specialists, and more than 200 support staff.
“We are finally at a stage where we can actually celebrate,” said Ryan Buck, group president with Compassion-First’s Texas hospitals. “While we have continued to provide care to the area pets, our people have been displaced and it is an important moment for us to all be under one roof.”
Soon after Hurricane Harvey devastated southern Texas in August 2017, hospital founder Wayne Whitney, DVM, DACVS, told employees: “Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists is not a building, it’s you, the people who work here. We will be back, bigger and better and stronger, and you are part of that. We are a family.”
Hospital employees and Compassion-First responded to the crisis by partnering with referral practices and opening a temporary hospital next door to the new location.
Today, Gulf Coast offers 14 departments:
- Anesthesia and pain management
- Avian and exotics
- Cardiology
- Dentistry and oral surgery
- Dermatology and allergy
- Diagnostic imaging
- 24/7 emergency and critical care
- Internal medicine
- Neurology and neurosurgery
- Oncology
- Ophthalmology
- Rehabilitation and fitness
- Sports medicine
- Surgery and orthopedics
Among the offerings are 39 exam rooms, nine operating rooms, a 1.5 Tesla MRI machine, 64-slice computed tomography, a linear accelerator and 536 parking spaces.
The former hospital was featured on two seasons of the TV show “Animal ER.”